Chapter 5
Vincent asked to meet the next morning.
His message came through Rebecca, as I’d instructed him. He wanted to speak “somewhere private,” away from the hospital and the lawyers’ offices. Rebecca read the request aloud, then looked at me over the top of her phone.
“You can say no.”
“I know.”
I looked down at the bank statements spread across her conference table. The December 24 hotel payment was still circled in red. It didn’t prove who had stayed there. It didn’t prove who had requested it. It did make Vincent’s story about New York harder to swallow.
“If I meet him, you’re there.”
“Of course.”
“And we keep it to the records.”
Rebecca nodded. “I’ll make that clear.”
The meeting took place that afternoon in her office. Vincent arrived wearing the charcoal coat I’d bought him for our anniversary two years earlier. I noticed the coat, then hated myself for noticing it. The fabric and the memories attached to it meant nothing about the man inside it.
He stood when we entered.
“Claire.”
“Vincent.”
He glanced at Rebecca. “Thank you for agreeing to this.”
“I agreed to a meeting,” I said. “Not to anything else.”
His jaw tightened, but he sat down.
Rebecca placed a legal pad between us. “This meeting is about the documents Claire has reviewed and the financial information still outstanding. Please answer directly. If you don’t know something, say so.”
Vincent folded his hands. His wedding ring caught the light.
I had spent five years thinking of that ring as proof of a promise. Now it looked like a prop he’d forgotten to take off.
“You said you were in New York on Christmas Eve,” I began.
“I did.”
“The statement shows a payment to a Chicago hotel from our shared account.”
“I know.”
“Why did you tell me New York?”
He rubbed his thumb over his ring. “I didn’t want another fight.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“No.” He stared at the table. “It’s not.”
Rebecca made a small note. “Let’s stay with the question.”
Vincent drew a breath. “I was seeing Vanessa.”
The words landed plainly. No excuse wrapped around them. No careful phrase like we grew close or things got complicated. I waited for the rest.
“For how long?” I asked.
“Claire—”
“How long?”
“Three years.”
I looked at his hands. I didn’t want to look at his face.
“And you let her believe you were divorced.”
“I told her we were separated. I told her the divorce was done.”
“Were you divorced?”
“No.”
“Had you filed?”
He hesitated. “No.”
Rebecca’s pen stopped moving. “You told Vanessa that your divorce was final, but you had not filed for one?”
“Yes.”
I felt the old urge to help him explain himself. It came from habit, not love. I swallowed it before it could become a question.
“Why?” I asked.
“I thought I could keep everything from becoming ugly.”
“By lying to both of us?”
“I know how it sounds.”
“It sounds like you made a choice and expected the rest of us to live inside it.”
His eyes lifted to mine. For a moment, I saw the man who used to bring dinner to the hospital and wait up after my overnight shifts. Then I remembered calling him seventeen times while I lay in a hospital bed after our miscarriage. The man in front of me had been somewhere else, and he had let me believe he simply hadn’t heard.
“I didn’t plan for any of this to happen,” he said.
“That doesn’t make it accidental.”
Rebecca turned the statement toward him. “Several charges match dates or locations in the materials Claire provided. The records are incomplete, and some details remain unverified. Can you identify any of these transactions?”
Vincent looked over the page. His gaze stopped at the hotel payments, then moved to the restaurant charge.
“Some of them,” he said.
“Which ones?” Rebecca asked.
“The hotels. A few meals. Other expenses.”
“Were they related to your relationship with Vanessa?”
He looked at me.
“Answer the question,” I said.
“Yes.”
Rebecca wrote something down. “Were those paid from the shared account?”
“I believe so.”
“You believe so, or you know so?”
He exhaled. “I used the account.”
“Did you intend to repay those amounts?”
“Yes.”
The word came quickly. Too quickly.
“When?” Rebecca asked.
“I don’t know. I was going to move money back.”
“From where?”
“My business account, eventually.”
“Was that transfer made?”
“No.”
I had thought anger would feel hot. Instead, I felt tired, as if each answer took a little weight from one side of me and added it to the other. The money mattered. So did the fact that he’d used it while I thought our marriage was only strained, not already being lived as a story he told two different women.
“Was the December 24 hotel payment yours?” I asked.
He looked down at the circled entry.
“Yes.”
“Why Chicago?”
He didn’t answer.
“Vincent.”
“I was there.”
The room seemed to narrow around the sentence.
“And you told me New York.”
“Yes.”
“Did you think I wouldn’t find out?”
“I didn’t think about what would happen if you did.”
That was the first answer that sounded honest. It was also the one that hurt most.
Rebecca set another sheet beside the statement. “We need a complete accounting, including the source and purpose of each transaction, the associated records, and any authorizations. Claire has denied signing one transfer form. That doesn’t establish what happened to it, but we need the original and any supporting documentation.”
Vincent’s shoulders stiffened. “I can give you the statements.”
“We need the supporting records too,” Rebecca said. “Anything that explains the transactions and the authorization.”
“I can’t just hand over everything from the business.”
“Some business records may be relevant,” Rebecca said. “We’ll request what’s necessary and address legitimate confidentiality concerns through counsel. But ‘everything’ isn’t what she asked for.”
He turned to me. “You know this could hurt the company.”
I met his eyes.
“I know it could reveal what happened.”
“There are people who depend on me.”
“And there was a wife who depended on you.”
His mouth opened, then closed.
I didn’t tell him about the pregnancy. The words rose in me for a second—*There’s a baby*—but I pushed them back down. He had no right to turn my private medical news into a reason I should soften the questions. I would decide when to tell him, and how. Not in this room, not while he was bargaining with information.
Rebecca placed a printed list in front of him. “Please provide the relevant records through counsel by January fifth. If you need clarification about a specific request, send it to me in writing.”
Vincent barely glanced at the page.
“You really think I’m going to let this go to court?”
“That’s up to you,” Rebecca said. “Claire is asking for an accurate accounting.”
“I’m trying to resolve this without destroying everything.”
“Then give us the records,” I said.
He turned to me, and for the first time that day, his composure cracked.
“I’m sorry.”
I believed he was sorry he’d been caught. I didn’t know whether he was sorry for the rest, and I wasn’t going to guess.
“I’m not here to decide whether you’re sorry,” I said. “I’m here to find out what you did.”
He looked at the list again, then at the statements. His fingers pressed against the edge of the paper.
“You don’t understand what the complete records could do,” he said.
“Then explain it.”
May you like
His face had gone pale.
“The complete records could cost me more than my marriage.”
